Valerie Jarrett reaches out to (a few) BlogHers

August 27, 2009 | Barack Obama,BlogHer,Politics,Valerie Jarrett

Valerie Jarrett, a White House senior adviser, wanted to “reach out to bloggers” during the BlogHer conference in Chicago in July. So she met with 17 of them.

She held a private meeting with an exclusive group of bloggers at a conference with about 1,500 attendees. Why not the whole group? It’s not as if she didn’t have large groups on her schedule.

She was the keynote speaker at the National Association of Black Journalists convention, which had about 2,000 attendees in August. She even brought along two other Obama administration officials.

She was also the keynote speaker at the Netroots Nation Convention, where she took questions from some of the 2,000 attendees.

Why the exclusion at BlogHer? Is it because BlogHer isn’t supposed to be political? (Even though founder Lisa Stone asked Jarrett, “What should we do?” in terms of advocacy.) Or does the administration not take BlogHer attendees seriously? Or something else?